Monday, October 17, 2011

The water was running

Something strange happened last night. Here is what happened.

Every night before bed I clean up my room.

(I have to stop myself right there. I get in bed between 2 and 2:30 each night. So it's not night at all, it's early early morning. I have to stop pretending it's night and I have to stop pretending it's a normal time to go to sleep.)

Every early morning before bed I clean up my room.

I have a beautiful room. It's an absolutely gorgeous room. Every time we've had a party at our house it's ended up in my room.

(We have had exactly one party in our house. It ended up in my room.)

Putting things away is a ritual of mine. The room is glowing and clean when I finally climb into bed. It calms me down. I've also stopped losing so many important things and documents since I began this habit.

So I climbed into bed with the dog next to me, and together we watched an episode of Saturday Night Live, as per usual. There was total silence when I turned off the computer, that golden perk of living inside of a pea patch instead of on a normal street. Everything was still and quiet and, amazingly, I fell into a light, warm sleep almost immediately.
What's amazing about that is this. I usually take many long hours to sleep.

(If you've been doing the math, you've figured out that I fall asleep around 5am. Which explains why I wake up at the average hour of 1:30 in the afternoon, and why I only work the late shift. It's no way to live but I absolutely cannot get over my love for the night when nobody is bothering me and I can write and watch television and write.)

As I mentioned it was a light sleep, not even a total sleep. I still had the slightest pull over my thoughts. By and by I became aware that I had to go to the bathroom. I did what we all do and tried to ignore it, but that never works.

(When I was being treated at Bastyr Naturopathic Clinic the summer after my life went to shit, I learned that the number one reason people attend Bastyr was for night time urination. I still find this hard to believe.)

The term for night time urination is Nocturia.

Finally I forced my eyes to open fully, and with the shuffle of resignation made my way to the bathroom. As soon as I walked in I heard a loud noise. For a split second I thought it was raining heavily. Then I saw that the water was running in the bath.

I reflexively reached to turn it off and felt the water was cold. It was the hot water spigot that had been turned on so it must have been running for a long time. Had the drain not been pulled, the whole bathroom would have been flooding.

I relieved myself very uneasily. Then I went back to bed and tried to understand how I could have made such an error.

It made no sense. I never would have turned on the water and forgotten about it. It makes too much noise. It's not something I'd do. Someone must have entered my room, I concluded, sitting up suddenly. My eyes darted into the dark corners of the room.

That didn't make sense either. There's no reason why anyone would have come into my room after 2am, turned on the water, disturbed nothing else, and left.

I lay back down and tried to get the dog to come lie next to me, but she was fast asleep at the foot of the bed. I couldn't sleep. If it had been after 4am I would have just gotten up and started the day, and it certainly could have been after 4am. But I made the decision not to look at the clock. I have my reasons for that.

I fell asleep eventually.

(This is a miracle.)

The next afternoon when I woke up, I returned to the bathroom and examined the tub. Everything looked normal. I turned on the water and let it run against my hand. It was hot. I came to the conclusion, in the sensible hours of daylight, that I must have been sleep walking.

Except that I've never, ever sleep walked before. And I had barely been asleep at all that night. Just a light sleep. I've told you this multiple times before.

I'm not sure what this all means but I have some absolutely terrible ideas.

I love the night, and would gladly put 2:30 as my bedtime if my darn cutie little ladies didn't wake at 6. And, I just spent the day hearing ghost stories about island homes, so hmmmm.. Yup. I'd have to say it sounds like a visit.